Image: from Yak and Gnu, illustrated by Cat Chapman, published by Walker Books Australia

Trying to get a leg up in the picture book writing industry.  (A most ergonomic writing posture - highly recommended.)

                      And this is how I read aloud . . .

Toucan and I try to hypnotise
the children of St Peters Primary 
School in Brisbane, Australia.

In combat with Sarah Davis, ferocious champion illustrator, at an eventful dinner held by the Children's Book Council of Australia. Results of the fierce battle below . . .

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"Give us an animal! And an activity!"
​The audience threw us the awkward combination of a chinchilla (huh?) and golf. This is what we came up with, in a fretful 20 minutes (well, Sarah was cool as a cucumber; I was sweating like a cornered ferret, my mind fizzing horribly with painful fireworks):

Priscilla Chinchilla prepared for her swing -
golfing was really a ferretish thing -
others would try it; they'd begged and they'd pleaded.
But no-one could swing it EXACTLY as she did.

What glory it was to be born a chinchilla!
What fortune! What joy! An absolute thriller!
But just as she swung, at that moment of focus,
down came a thunderous swarming of locusts!

Nine angry bugs came down from the sky,
and gone was her club in the blink of an eye!
Then gone was the grass-
and the tee - and the ball -
till NOTHING was left of the fairway at all.

"WHY ME?" cried Priscilla, "WHAT have I done?
You locusts have ruined my great hole-in-one!
How spiteful! How mean!" And she fell to the ground,
with ferretish sobs (a rather odd sound).

In one buzzing voice, neither spiteful nor mean,
the locusts cried "Give us a turn on the green!
You hogged it, young ferret; you forced us to fight,
for GOLF's an inviolable Animal Right."

And so she reformed, that young golfing pro,
and kindly allowed other creatures a go.
And a golfer more great there has never been born,
than Priscilla, who coached all those locusts till dawn."

© Juliette MacIver 2015

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